General Dual Faced Cards

Chris Taylor

Contributor
If you're like me, Kaldheim/Strixhaven may have soured you on dual faced cards. However, as I've said elsewhere I definitely let that bleed over into other cards that don't necessarily deserve it, so I've done some scryfall diving to see what I might have missed.

I'm also not posting about any of the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt cards since we're more famaliar with those given they're what started this discussion in the first place. For future reference, here's the scryfall query for that, as I haven't played with any of those yet.

Obviously these may be a miss for your format for other reasons (power, archetype mismatch, rarity, don't run planeswalkers etc) but here's a few that I found interesting, divided by broad category rather than color:

Actual Modal Dual Faced Cards:

While I'm still not done reading Cosima, God of the Voyage (I'm on chapter 2, the language is a bit dense) these cards are ones I do like both sides of. Esika specifically as a ramp spell/5 color payoff is nice, and the amount of times the 5 color card comes up are so few and far between that it adds to complexity less.

The bar here is higher, I'll admit, but I want to acknowledge that these cards can be interesting.

Land Modal Dual Faced Cards:

These are not terrible complexity wise. Lands specifically being so simple is a big reduction in mental load, and while there are technically differences between the back (Plain ETB tapped vs ETB tapped unless you pay 3 life), it's not enough that I would (for eg) only run one of those kinds if the front faces both felt right.

Shoutout to Spikefield Hazard for hitting players and exiling, both relevant lines of text, Song-Mad Treachery in general (It mostly doesn't matter how much a given threaten effect costs, as on a good day it'll be the last spell you cast), and Malakir Rebirth/Sejiri Shelter for being great at the low threat count decks (prowess) that I love encouraging.

Traditional Flip Cards:


Obviously the distinction here is somewhat arbitrary but I had too many cards to dump in at once. This category I'm delineating as cards that either flip using the old werewolf tech, using mana, or mostly instantly (Skin Invasion, Garruk Relentless etc).

Town Gossipmonger is a surprisingly solid aggro beater, Lambholt Pacifist offers a nice workaround for the 3/3 defender in addition to the usual lines, Duskwatch Recruiter is just a solid all round card, and Journey to Eternity has all of the sweet inevitability of volrath's stronghold, with more work for a bit higher (?) of a payoff.

Quests:

As above, some of these cards might technically belong in the traditional category, but hey.
This is also the category with my favorites, so prepare for some (more) text

Thing in the ice is a joy, it's juuuust hard enough to flip to feel great. Also you get points if you proliferate your opponent's copy.
Hadana's Climb remains one of my favorite cards of all time and just isn't in the right colors for my current +1/+1 counters archetype
Treasure Map is a solid all round magic card and a really evocative story as well.
Vance's Blasting Cannons is perhaps the most aspirational card on this list but is almost perfectly serviceable as just a red howling mine (do we have a good name for "effect that draws you another card each turn"?)
It notably doesn't let you play lands, but cards like Outpost Siege don't give you the story equity this card does.
Nissa, Vastwood Seer is great for having a ramp card that's good on turn 3 and 7, as well as being one of the most fair walkers on her backside, avoiding token spam while still doing something useful but not overbearing.
Westvale Abbey is a lot more fair than other cards with indestructible as needing to sacrifice 5 creatures is a big ask against control and a big risk against aggro. If a board stalls out in some midrange mirror, I honestly consider it ending with a card like this often preferable to the game going on for another 30 minutes. Your mileage may vary.
Delver of Secrets is a contentious card. The power delta is too wide here for me to include personally, and I've never loved the specific odds on this card.

If you think I missed any, obviously my judgement is perfect and I've missed nothing. Share stories below.
 
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this is something i’ve been coming around on a bit. since i played the MID prerelease i think maybe i’m just gonna try some DFCs as is. but i want to keep it to a low quantity. thanks for the card dump, this will be a good place to look for possible includes!
 
valakut awakening and kazandu mammoth have been serving very well for me. The mammoth hits like a (fair) freight train, and the awakening is one of the better of the dump-hand sort of effects because it draws an extra to replace itself.

Disturb as a mechanic is a promising one for me, as it has clear modes when the front and back sides should be showing.

the Kaldheim and Strix DFCs are still a little iffy for me... it's so much text printed on one card. I took out Halvar (one of the simpler of these DFCs) and haven't found another that actually fills a role I need well enough to justify the complexity jump.
 
I haven't updated my CubeCobra with MID yet, but as of last count, I'm cubing with 34 DFC in a 720 list, with the majority being the MDFC of the last year, particularly because I run the 10-card (20-card??) cycle of Pathways as my 7th duel land for each color combo. If you want to get a quick visualization of the DFC in your cube, just add this on to the end of your CubeCobra URL:

?f=layout%3Amodal_dfc+OR+layout%3Atransform&view=spoiler

For the flexibility and design space they open up, I cannot imagine cubing without them. DFC are, conceptually, some of the best game design elements in Magic. Practically, they're ass, and I especially hate the Kaldheim and Strixhaven ones for being obtuse and unclear, with minimal marking to identify them as MDFC and no meaningful cohesion between the sides. When Zendikar Rising first was being spoiled, I had planned to only run the mythic cycle OR the CIPT variety, because even to me, it was quite vexing to have two very similar cards that fundamentally played differently, and you wouldn't necessarily know which one is which until you unsleeved it and flipped it around.

I am much harder on DFC in general than on typical cards, not only because of the functional requirement to unsleeve and resleeve cards all the time, but because of the unnecessary complexity they bring, especially to those who don't follow Standard sets closely and have no concept that the back half of Plargg does something entirely disparate from what our favorite ogre does. I still can't decide whether or not to run Plargg as a mono red card or lock him up in Boros -- he's currently a gold card just because his guild is relatively weak, but I'd much prefer to get custom inner sleeves that seamlessly cover over the flip area on the bottom with an opaque design that looks like a traditional Magic card.

While I've made a large exception of my values when it comes to making an inviting cube experience for my boy Plargg, there's other MDFC that I can't similarly justify, even if I'd want to. Whether it's because the combination of the two sides is too complex or because the "juice isn't worth the squeeze", here are cards I'd absolutely be cubing with if I played in a Digital-only environment:



If you'd like to see all the DFC ranked by their adoption rate on CubeCobra, you can find that ranked list here.

(Also, for those of you who didn't catch it in a previous thread, I am taking out my "Classic-Style" werewolves in my MID update so that I have consistency across werewolves.)

Not to be wholly negative -- again, 5% of my cube is DFC (which feels like too many, now that I spell that out) -- I want to share the transform and MDFC cards I consider essential and would probably not skip out on even if my cube were to shrink to half its size. If your environment can tolerate them from a power-level POV, I cannot recommend these cards enough for the gameplay value they bring:



---



And then there's Plargg. I love Plargg. I'd wanted a good 2 CMC red looter for so long and he finally came, and as a fun legendary creature with a great name!!! I was beyond excited. Until I flipped him over and he was a serviceable white three-drop that honestly isn't that embarrassing to run, especially as an all-upside backside to a card I already adore, but now my sweet little boy has this weird circle in the top left of the card that no one will ever pay attention to but then they see that text??? on the bottom of the card??? who is this 3 mana cleric??????? who is she???????? what does she have to do with Plargg, why can't she just let me play with my ogre??????????
 
valakut awakening and kazandu mammoth have been serving very well for me. The mammoth hits like a (fair) freight train, and the awakening is one of the better of the dump-hand sort of effects because it draws an extra to replace itself.

Disturb as a mechanic is a promising one for me, as it has clear modes when the front and back sides should be showing.

the Kaldheim and Strix DFCs are still a little iffy for me... it's so much text printed on one card. I took out Halvar (one of the simpler of these DFCs) and haven't found another that actually fills a role I need well enough to justify the complexity jump.
yeah there’s just no grokking the double novella dfcs lol
 
I... I actually kinda like Augusta, Dean of Order. There's so much jank that she can help you pull.

While I'm generally not a fan of DFCs, one that I really love the play patterns for is



You use the backside to loot + remove stuff in the early game, then play the front side as a bulky, annoying-to-remove beater.

It's just a shame that it's an actual novel. Chapter 5 is especially riveting.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Much as I love plarg, Augusta is actually good. Who doesn't like an anthemn, and she's super flexible on top of that
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Delver of Secrets has always been a trap in my cube when I still ran it (years and years ago). You need an insanely high number of instants and sorceries to make it work, or a boatload of Brainstorms, I guess. The problem is that his flip chance is typically going to be way less than 50%.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Now if you specifically wanted one of each color (as seems the case), these are worth considering:



I think I've run more blue flip cards than most other colors...
 
I have some of the quest transforming cards ([card]Search for Azcanta[/card], etc.) in a grid and am highly considering adding Midnight Hunt cards. Disturb cards seem like great card advantage inclusions with some variety to play patterns. The following cards also interest me a lot!
 
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